The Grain Offering מנחה-Minchah

Today we are going to discuss the Minchah offering. This sacrifice is usually offered together with the Olah mentioned in the last lesson. However, there are two distinct differences. First, instead of an animal meat offering, it is a grain offering (cooked or uncooked) made from the choicest part of the grain known as the semolina which is ground and turned into dough. By the way, completely disregard the KJV translation where minchah has been translated into the word meat. This is a mistake and completely misleading.

Second, whereas the olah offering was completely burned up on the altar, only a very tiny portion is taken from the batch of dough of the minchah offering and thrown on the brazen altar to be burned up as a pleasant aroma to the L-rd. Now as soon as this happens, in G-d’s eyes, the remaining dough that is not burned up attains a state of holiness. Paul is directly referring to the minchah offering in verse Roman 11:16 as follows:

“If the part of the dough offered as firstfruits is holy, then the whole batch is holy; if the root is holy, so are the branches.”

Now as with the olah, and remember both of these sacrifices were usually offered in conjunction with each other, the minchah is NOT offered in response to a particular offense that one has committed. It is offered as a compulsory gift, kind of how the conquered would pay tribute to the conquering king. It was an act of dedication expressing one’s desire to obey G-d.

Understanding the Biblical view of sin in conjunction with Christ’s sacrifice on the cross will help us to shed some light on this subject. First, the Bible makes it clear that we sin because we are sinners and NOT vice versa. In other words, our sin can be divided into two different categories. The first category is our sinful nature due to Adam’s fall and the second category is our sinful behavior that stem’s from our sin nature. Through the sacrificial system, we can see that the Bible draws a line of demarcation between our nature and our behavior. There are sacrifices that represent atonement for our sin nature and there our sacrifices that atone for our individual misdeeds. However, before our individual misdeeds can be atoned for, our sin nature has to be taken care of first. Hence, in a sense, consider the olah and minchah to be those particular sacrifices that symbolically represent atonement for our sin nature. However, I stress the words “symbolically represent” because only Christ’s blood can actually be the suitable sacrifice for our inherent Adamic sin nature. So getting back on track, the olah and the minchah are offered up not because of any one particular wrong thing we have done but because of who we are with our sinful natures. Taking care of these two sacrifices paves the way for forgiveness of all of the sins we commit on a daily basis and will continue to do so until we are called home.

This can be further fleshed out in the L-rd’s prayer for believers when we ask the Father to “forgive us our trespasses”. Because believers have already put their trust in Yeshua, metaphorically speaking, their required olah and minchah to atone for their sin natures have already been paid. Hence, the “trespasses” part of the L-rd’s prayer represents those sacrifices that atone for sinful behavior.

L-rd, we thank you again for your word in Leviticus that so vividly fleshes out how great and perfect Your Son, Yeshua’s sacrifice was.

Amen.